


the sanctity of love

by joanofarcstan



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Bittersweet Ending, First Time, M/M, their ship has a tag...... fantastic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:22:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28861011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joanofarcstan/pseuds/joanofarcstan
Summary: One version of the tale of Ulmo and Findaráto, across seas and Ages.In a world where snakes devour their own tails, traitors their own protectors, and cities their own kings, all comes full circle: from hoping first because you can and then because you must, to Tol Sirion reclaiming her priest and setting his sacrifice into the very soul of her earth, to our heroes finding themselves in each other's arms at the end as in the beginning.
Relationships: Finrod Felagund | Findaráto/Ulmo
Comments: 11
Kudos: 13





	the sanctity of love

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [dear fellow traveler](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20391691) by [RaisingCaiin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin). 



> 0\. Yes, so this began as a smutfic and got way out of hand. At the first break, the smut ends and the plot begins :)  
> 1\. Am I procrastinating on a debate worth 15% of my final grade? Maybe. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

He is young and brave and vulnerable; and he trembles when Ulmo strokes his lovely face, eyelashes settling gold dust against the cream of his cheek. ‘I—I have not…’ he trails off softly, blushing a little and looking down at the water between them, but Ulmo shakes his head and presses a chaste kiss to Findaráto‘s lips.

‘We will go slowly,’ he promises, gentle but steady like the waves. These are the first words he speaks in the long hours they have already spent this evening, where Laurelin once bathed the horizon in red and gold and the stars now shine silver-white about Findaráto's head. The water circles around them, forming a sort of whirlpool, but its flow is gentle and its trill soft. Whether it is he or the water that caresses Findaráto’s waist is immaterial; whether it is he or the water that pulls him close and whispers soundless, wordless devotion is insignificant.

All that matters is that Findaráto nods and lets himself be held and moans low in the back of his throat when Ulmo kisses him again.

Findaráto needs touch, this they both understand when he arches into Ulmo’s embrace and lets out a shuddering sigh as Ulmo’s fingers brush along his spine; but Ulmo suspects that his young lover knows little of how much he needs touch. As he calls the current to spirit them away, Ulmo tells Findaráto, silently, lips pressed to his thrumming pulse, _There is no shame here_ ; for fear trembles as strong as desire in Findaráto's lithe, supple body. He is young, and he is inexperienced in the pleasures of the flesh, and he seeks comfort, clinging to Ulmo's shoulders, searching his eyes; but he is brave and he is willing and he _wants_.

The currents bring them to a place that the waters have yielded up for the night, a place that between the rises of the tide is enchanted, slate-grey limestone glowing soft green and gold in the darkness. Gently, the waves lap at the stone ledges, humming with the tears and laughter they have learned from the trees and stones and Elves on shores both near and far. A-riot with colour and awash with emotion, these are the shore-places that Ulmo treasures most after his wise, unknowable deeps where the Sea remembers the names of her drowned in song.

In his arms, Findaráto gives a small gasp of wonder.

This is a place between time, a place that will disappear beneath the morning waves and rise again the next evening, a place where no eyes reach except the Sea, where they can breathe in the embrace of shadow-curtains and the green-gold glow that surrounds Findaráto like a long-missed friend. Here the salt will not roughen Findaráto’s skin, nor the wind snarl his hair. This is a place for them, and as Findaráto turns slowly in a circle, reaching out to touch, softly, hesitantly, the bed of moss that glows brighter at his fingertips, Ulmo watches and rests a hand on Findaráto's lower back, letting it slip to his hip as Findaráto turns back to face him, wonder alight in his eyes.

‘It is beautiful,’ he breathes, letting Ulmo lift him again in his arms and lay him down on the bed of braided kelp and moss.

‘So are you,’ Ulmo tells him, and kisses him again, deep and quenching, settling between Findaráto‘s parted legs and brushing a hand, strong and cold as the Sea’s depths, over his stomach, his hip, stopping at his thigh.

Findaráto‘s blush at both the praise and the tacit request for permission is shy and sweet, but there is still fear in him. ‘Will it hurt?’ he asks softly, and his face is so open, so vulnerable that Ulmo can only lay another kiss on his forehead.

‘It may.’ Ulmo does not lie, not when Findaráto will have enough lies and losses for his life many times over. ‘We do not have to.’

‘I want to.’ The desire in his swift reply makes Findaráto blush again, and Ulmo wants him to stay innocent and trusting and vulnerable, even if such a wish is foolish in the sorrows that must come. But for now Ulmo can kiss along Findaráto’s throat again and smile against his hot, thundering pulse when his hips jerk involuntarily, and bite down gently to make Findaráto‘s fingers curl into his shoulders.

‘Please, I want—’ Findaráto whispers, eyes dark and cheeks flushed, and moans, soft and rough, when Ulmo worries the skin of his neck between his teeth. ‘I do not know how, but—’ And he gasps again as Ulmo lets his breath puff over the sensitized spot at his pulse.

Like this, pliant beneath him, a lovely purple mark already forming against the ivory of his throat, whimpering and needy, Findaráto is beautiful. Exquisite. And Ulmo can deny him nothing.

‘Then I will show you,’ he promises, gentle and mighty, and hopes that the tenderness in his touch will be enough to tell Findaráto how much he treasures this gift of trust and desire, more than even the Sea treasures the finest pearl. He is not fond of words, but he lets his palms roam over Findaráto’s body, slow and possessive, mapping the smooth, yet-unscarred skin, and returns eventually to the place between his creamy thighs.

He works Findaráto open slowly, agonizingly slowly, for Findaráto is so tight and despite the desire in his earlier cries, uncertainty is still palpable in his spirit, and Ulmo fears to hurt him. Soothing him, Ulmo lays open-mouthed kisses to the sharpness of his hip bone and the tip of his cock, tasting Findaráto’s salt as it seeps onto his tongue. Once Ulmo has two fingers inside his young lover, rocking them into him with the steady rhythm of the waves, he finds the angle that makes Findaráto’s cries break and seeks out the spot that will set his world alight with pleasure.

Just— _here_. Findaráto’s whole body jerks in time with his moan, shudders running through his slender frame; as Ulmo lingers there, pausing his rhythm to press his fingers down in slow circles, Findaráto makes a sound on the edge between pleasure and almost-pain, low and desperate, that Ulmo knows he will remember, forever.

Findaráto, with all the self-perceived invincibility and impatience of youth, believes himself to be ready long before he is; and in response to his pleas, Ulmo shakes his head and works another finger inside, curls them in a motion that has Findaráto arching off the ledge and coming messily over his own stomach with a cry that breaks and founders as a the Sea on a cliff-shore.

It is good: Findaráto is relaxed, loose-limbed in the hazy afterglow of pleasure, eyes half-lidded and small sighs and gasps falling from his lips as Ulmo withdraws his fingers and begins easing into him. Bit by bit Findaráto's body yields to take Ulmo to the hilt, and when he is fully sheathed inside, he admires the tableau that Findaráto makes beneath him: golden hair fanned out around his head, throat marked and bared, cock hardening anew between them against his stomach, painted with his own release; but most powerful, most beautiful, most humbling are Findaráto's sea-bright eyes watching, drunk on trust and pleasure.

'Stay a moment,' Findaráto pleads, wrapping his legs around Ulmo's waist and tugging at his shoulders until his body covers Findaráto's, eliciting a soft sigh. 'Just like this.'

Ulmo can deny him nothing. He remains still like how the Sea sometimes turns to silver glass in early morning or evening, and kisses Findaráto. When Findaráto is ready, Ulmo begins to move, slow but steady, rocking into him with the rhythm of the Sea that is strong even when it is gentle, and soothing even as it stings. The Sea is brilliant and willful and wild, and cherishes best the ones who are free in their surrender; and Ulmo loses himself, engulfs himself in the cadence of Findaráto's cries, the tender press of his pliant body.

He is still young, this bright, sweet spirit, thinks Ulmo, pressing a kiss to Findaráto's temple as he clings to Ulmo and moans at another ruthlessly gentle thrust, and has known no hardship, but he is already so brave.

______________________

But youth unmarred by bloodshed and sorrow cannot last while Melkor walks free, and Ulmo can only watch and mourn as Findaráto, still young, still vulnerable, still yet open-hearted, forsakes his homeland and sings the first notes of a song of triumph and tragedy of which Ulmo has heard only fragments in the coldest deeps; but its theme rises now from the ice of the Helcaraxë, a grotesque war-march parody of a dance.

He watches now, from the only place except Angband where no light penetrates, as Findaráto halts with his people and looks out to the still, black waters that hide vengeful currents and eternal coldness. Ulmo has forced this calm, and it will not last for more than a few hours, for the Sea is wild and willful and hates to be bridled and Ulmo’s lordship over the Sea is not as Melkor’s in Beleriand. But for the sake of this bright spirit, this free-hearted youth who already knows loss as well as he knows love, who is foremost in Ulmo’s love for the Eldalië, Ulmo has done and will do what he can.

Findaráto leans forward, toeing the border of ice and sea, and for a moment Ulmo considers meeting him, sending up a wave to clasp his forearm, to cradle him and bring him to a place far from any doom, where the light is tinted deep green instead of white, and there are pearls instead of emeralds, and the glow is the playful, gentle blue of algae instead of the cold, hard light of the unforgiving stars. Yet Findaráto catches himself, though his eyes are weary and the hard set of his mouth is softened by something—longing, perhaps, or grief.

He turns away. He does not weep.

Perhaps because it is folly to, on the Ice with its knife-sharp winds and thread-fine, blade-thin sheets concealing treacherous waters; or perhaps because Findaráto believes himself to be forsaken, cast away by the Sea that was his cradle when he was small and his sanctuary when he was young; or perhaps because Findaráto has not forgiven himself.

He comes back. He kneels.

He does not pray.

The raging, rebellious choir of the Sea that Ulmo has lashed into submission for these few short hours throws off its yoke and screams in discordant harmony, rising up knife-sharp and anvil-heavy to pound at the Ice until slabs and columns break away, magnificent white towers dashed to pieces in a sea of horror. The Noldor are not forgiven, nor will they be until they have paid dearly, with ruined lands and ruined hearts; and even then not all.

Findaráto bows his head. He turns away for the last time, and he does not return to the Sea while he remains on the Ice.

It is a fool who believes that the Sea belongs to him, and a wise man—a lover, perhaps—who knows that he belongs to the Sea. It pains Ulmo to know that Findaráto believes himself to be neither.

______________________

If the Eldalië are to stand defiant, they will need aid; they cannot be allowed to be subdued, vanquished, extinguished by Melkor's armies, Ulmo reasons. They will need hidden strongholds, hidden cities to safeguard their people and safeguard their hope. It is a fool's hope, _estel_ as the Noldor name it, but it is their only hope.

Ulmo chooses well his hero for this task, though it was never really a choice.

Findaráto smiles at him, but it is not the shy, brave smile that used to grace his fair face in Valinor. Instead it is bittersweet, and sad, and so very weary. 'I suppose this is a new kind of torment that the Sea has sent to me,' he says in dream-land on the banks of Sirion, his head pillowed on grass instead of kelp. 'It is not enough that I must relive my crimes, but I must pay the price for loving, too.'

He will, truly, in time, time that is not so far off if Ulmo's marking of the modulation in his song is right, but that is not what he means right now.

'Tell me,' says Findaráto suddenly, and his eyes are still sea-bright, but now they are also sea-hard, sea- _angry_ , 'did you know that it must be like this?'

Yet Ulmo has never lied to Findaráto before, and does not intend to now. 'I knew there must be tragedy woven from devotion, and grief raised to art, and defiance exalted as hope—' he uses _estel_ , the fool's hope, for it is _estel_ to which Finrod must dedicate his days; the other choice is submission, and submission has been desecrated by the fall '—but it was not given to me to know how or when.'

He almost expects Findaráto to be angry, to rage against him for not blocking their path to Middle-earth, for not standing together with the Eldalië to bear the fire and iron of Morgoth's wrath, for not doing _more_ , doing _something_. But Findaráto only smiles and sighs, a sad but not unkind light in his eyes, and Ulmo remembers why it is Findaráto whom he has loved best.

'I once loved you, and perhaps you loved me, too,' Findaráto says. 'Tell, then, the things you have come to tell.'

Ai, it is hard, that Findaráto doubts Ulmo’s love for him, but that is easier left out of the conversation now.

Where to begin, how to describe? How to direct this bright, yearning spirit whose eyes have hardened too fast, whom Ulmo must love just as the Sea must be free, who cannot know that Sirion weeps with him?

‘Findaráto,’ Ulmo begins slowly, ‘what do you think kingship is?’

Were he younger and less touched by tragedy, Findaráto might have laughed that he did not ask to be answered with more questions, but now he is only thought edged with sorrow, looking out over the infinite plains and sands and waters of his dream-land, and Ulmo knows he is thinking of Finwë in Formenos, Fingolfin in Mithrim, Thingol in Menegroth.

(Findaráto, wherever he goes.)

At last he concludes that kingship is _service_ , first and foremost, with fire in his eyes and sincerity in his soul, and Ulmo knows that he will make a good king.

 _He was a good king, that one_ , his people will say of him, even as they wash his blood from their hands, _whose only fault was that he loved too well_.

'I cannot promise you lasting peace or joy unmarred,' Ulmo tells him heavily, knowing that tears of sorrow will carve canyons in Findaráto's gentle soul.

'You have never done so.' Yet Findaráto's words are not a reproach, but a reminder, and an indication to go on. Even now he bears the marks of kingship.

'Yet I must promise you tragedy.'

And Ulmo shows him a city fair that must come to flame, a fortress full-wrought that must crumble to ash, a legacy of the West, glittering with jewels paid for in blood that demand blood in turn. In his dreams Findaráto brings the serpent into the nest and makes it comfortable, walks towards the hungry wolf with welcoming arms, smiles as he takes the poisoned chalice and raises it to his lips. Snakes devour their own tails and towers their own architects and cities their own kings; and through it all runs another thread, though whither it leads none can say—except to a death small and ignominious at an enemy’s feet upon an isle consecrated and violated and hallowed again by sacrifice, a covenant of blood spilling crimson before a carven throne.

And through it all there is hope, but again it is _estel_ , the fool's hope, the power and glory and life thrown away for the slimmest chance that two people, no matter how ill-prepared or unlikely or utterly _alone_ , might conquer the darkness with their love.

'Your death and ten others upon your head, alone in the darkness with nothing but the knowledge that you fulfilled your oath,' Ulmo tells his once-lover with an intensity that rivals that of the Sea beating the shore.

Yet Findaráto has never let hardship break his fierce loyalty, and if his voice is not steady, his spirit is strong. 'What must I do?'

He bears the marks of kingship, this Ulmo has known. Then let those marks become a mantle!

‘What you have already said.’

A moment, then understanding dawns on Findaráto’s spirit. He has always been clever, quick to see what others do not, but nevertheless he is kind, and that is why Ulmo has brought him here.

‘Kingship is service, first and foremost,’ he repeats, carefully moulding every syllable and letting it ring, as if testing the way it fits him.

These are the last words he speaks to Findaráto, this night in dream-land. ‘Let kingship be your people’s shield and sword against the Shadow!’

______________________

Findaráto changes his name, Sindarizes it to _Finrod_ , but Ulmo has not the occasion to ever use it, so Findaráto remains _Findaráto_ in his mind. He does not see Findaráto again in Middle-earth except from afar, nor does Findaráto call upon him, for they both know that neither can change the threads of fate. And Findaráto passes his nights alone.

It comes to pass that when Nargothrond is full-wrought, Findaráto kneels by the edge of Sirion, trailing his fingers in the rushing water. He does not pray, but Ulmo sends a current to caress his hand anyway, and the look of bittersweet fondness in his eyes makes him seem older, wiser, marked by war and death and tragedy beyond measure.

By the Bragollach, the canyons already run deep within Findaráto's heart, but that does not stop him from pressing his ring, slick with blood but shining gold, into his saviour's hand, nor from breaking bread with the kinsmen who will be his ruin by his own hearth and welcoming them with warmth and succour. So begins the first act of the prophecy.

_Kingship is service, first and foremost._

Even when Beren comes to Nargothrond with the ring, seeking that Findaráto redeem his oath, and with him an evil now stirring that will see two more slayings of Elf on Elf, even then Findaráto does not hesitate to set in motion the cycle of the snake devouring its own tail, the traitor his own protector, the city her own king.

And, eventually, after the tower has devoured its architect, too, and cast out his bones for Lúthien Tinúviel to bury, Ulmo witnesses the isle of Tol Sirion reclaim her priest and set his sacrifice in the very soul of her earth, until the land breaks and founders beneath the wrath of the Sea.

 _I am not here to earn a good ending_ , said Findaráto in his last hours to the river that wept and raged for him, even if he did not remember it existed. _I am here to fulfill my duty_. So closes the last act of the prophecy.

_Kingship is service, first and foremost._

______________________

Findaráto is the first returned, and indeed Ulmo did not know, did not believe Námo would ever rescind the Doom. Yet now Findaráto stands waist-deep in the Sea, in a body with scars and wounds erased, whole and hale, and his eyes are still sea-bright, but the depth of them, like the deepest, most wondrous, most horrifying of Ulmo’s waters where the Sea remembers the names of her drowned in song, bears witness to a lifetime on far shores of war and kingship and service—for what is kingship if not service?

That is not easily left behind, and indeed Findaráto refuses to leave it behind. ‘I must go,’ he tells Ulmo, for the West has been raising her army against Morgoth. ‘I remember.’

In two words Findaráto has captured a world of love and loss, loyalty and betrayal, and life and death and tragedy; so Ulmo may only touch Findaráto’s face and say, ‘Then you will.’

But for now—for now, before Findaráto must once again take up the sword and cast his eyes over the glittering expanse of the wild, hungry Sea to the weeping, gasping shores beyond, Ulmo lets his hands slide over Findaráto’s skin, trace the unbroken ribs, come to rest on his slender waist.

Findaráto’s body still moulds to Ulmo’s, as it did an Age ago, before shadow and Sea and Doom sundered them. And now, eyelashes settling gold dust against the cream of his cheek, Findaráto surrenders, an act once more made holy.

He is older now and wiser and sadder; but still he sighs in Ulmo’s embrace, lets the fall of his golden hair obscure his sea-deep eyes until Ulmo tips his chin up; and then he arches, gently, exposing the pearly curve of his delicate throat, offering himself up to be claimed and cherished.

And for a moment the shadow fades; and he is just young and brave and vulnerable again.

**Author's Note:**

> 2\. I hope you enjoyed it! Leave a comment to tell me what you think and I'll make you scrambled eggs <3  
> (2.5. Personally, I'm really proud of this bit: " _And, eventually, after the tower has devoured its architect, too, and cast out his bones for Lúthien Tinúviel to bury, Ulmo witnesses the isle of Tol Sirion reclaim her priest and set his sacrifice in the very soul of her earth, until the land breaks and founders beneath the wrath of the Sea._ ")  
> 3\. Find me on tumblr @[fingolfino](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/fingolfino)!


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